4 Replies to “Monday’s Mash-up”

Just posted the same comment on Jason’s blog re: Karen Hughes’s failures among ethnic Kurds and Arabs in Germany:I’m among the last people you’ll ever hear defend Karen Hughes. But I feel I should point out that blaming the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs for the terrible image of the U.S. amongst ethnic Arabs and Kurds in Germany is a lot like blaming the head cheerleader for a football team that just lost 55-0.
I don’t care if you have a combination of Bill Clinton, Edward R. Murrow and Martin Luther King Jr running public diplomacy for the United States. NO ONE could sell U.S. policy in Iraq – because it is completely unsellable.
Even the best public diplomacy cannot be a cover for bad policy. Like a few of us like to say – it’s like putting lipstick on a pig.